Philosopher Thomas Hobbes says that we laugh when we feel superior to something or someone. If that's true, then the laughter should absolutely never stop in Best in Show, Christopher Guest's scathing mockumentary on people who not only take their dogs too seriously, but insist on having a contest to see just whose dog has been taken the most seriously. The Mayflower Dog Show in the film is apparently modelled on the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show that exists in the real--and therefore absurd--world we live in. Guest's contention in the film seems to be that the dogs aren't nearly as interesting as the freaks who show them off to one another, and that contention is probably true. But is it funny?
Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. The best characters in the film are easily Meg and Hamilton Swan (Parker Posey and Michael Hitchcock), who get things rolling in a discussion with their pet psychologist in which they express guilt for having assumed the 'congress of the cow' sexual position from the Kama Sutra in front of their dog, who (they say) is angry at them for what he saw. If we are to take their word for it, their dog is always angry at them about something. He's mad because he senses the tension between them or because his favorite toy has been lost. He's never anything but mad.
And working to diffuse the dog's tension gives these two incredibly shallow people a common purpose, a goal, a foundation for a marriage that is fundamentally directionless and sadistic. Meg and Hamilton "met in Starbucks, not the same Starbucks, different Starbucks across the street from each other." Starbucks is the exact right place for shallow professionals to meet one another, and it helps that they shared taste in clothing and particularly in clothing catalogues. "I was such a J. Crew person, back then," Hamilton says. And then, as if he is allowing us to peer into the very depths of his soul, he adds, "Still am!"
The Swans are fun to watch not simply because they are complete idiots, but because they are hateful idiots. They yell at each other constantly and treat all other humans as obstacles in their path to dog show greatness. When their dog lunges at a man in an airport, they blame the stranger, not the dog. When it lunges at a judge in the dog show, they refuse to accept the disqualification. If they had an ounce of human kindness between them, we might feel sorry for them instead, but if feeling superior to the Swans makes us laugh, I don't see the harm in it.
The laughter becomes a little more suspect with some of the other characters. The best comic acting in the film is done by Gerald and Cookie Fleck (Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara--who worked together on Canada's brilliant SCTV). If we're laughing at Gerald Fleck because he literally has two left feet, then we're laughing for the wrong reason. And if we're laughing at him because his wife Cookie beds down with every man she sees, then we're laughing for the wrong reason again. But I actually think that the editing of the film is such as to make us identify more with the freakish, feckless Fleck than with any of the other characters. The film shows us that it is not out to get the deformed when a hotel manager (played by the improvisationally brilliant Ed Begley, Jr. has mercy on Fleck and lets him stay in the hotel even though he has no money and no reservations).
The least successful of the dog show contestants are the two homosexual couples and the (predictably) stupid hillbilly Harlan Pepper (played by Christopher Guest himself). Pepper starts amusingly enough by trying to merge his two passions of ventriloquism and dog breeding. He says he half expects his dog to tell the judge that he is the best in the show, but that it won't be done with words. "His mind," Pepper says, "is like a telepathy thing." But Pepper's dimwittedness turns out to be a bit of a one-trick pony. We know that when he talks he will say something stupid, and usually not as entertainingly stupid as his spiel on telepathy.
The male homosexual couple of Scott Donlan (John Michael Higgins) and Stefan Vanderhoof (Michael McKean, whose performance here is every bit as lackluster as his performance in Spinal Tap was inspired) seem to think that there's something inherently funny about being gay. There isn't.
The female homsosexual couple of Sheri Ann Ward Cabot (Jennifer Coolidge) and the aptly named Christy Cummings (Jane Lynch) must not realize that they are in a comedy. Although their relationship is as hateful as that of the Swans, it isn't at all laughably hateful. Christy is a smart, domineering woman who exerts an ugly control over Sheri that reminds me of too many profoundly dysfunctional relationships (gay or straight) that I see in life to be as funny as it's supposed to be here.
If the humor relied entirely on the contestants, in other words, the film would fail. But there are extraordinary performances in minor roles throughout the film. Larry Miller plays a brusque, unfeeling man whose job is to talk suicides down from buildings. "Trade secret," he blurts, "they all jump." And even if Fred Willard (in his depiction of commentator Buck Laughlin) takes on the fairly easy target of the garrulous sidekick assigned to an expert, his unholy chemistry with the stuffy Trevor Beckwith (Jim Piddock) is riotously funny.
If Best in Show is not as funny as we expect, it's because we expect so much of the participants (and particularly the mastermind, Christopher Guest). It's not as funny as Spinal Tap, but it's worlds funnier than the average big budget Hollywood comedy in which Adam Sandler falls down (laugh #1), drools (laugh #2), and falls down while drooling (finale).
Christopher Guest brings his unique brand of lunacy to the screen with another mockumentary in the tradition of WAITING FOR GUFFMAN. This one BEST IN ...More at Family Video
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